Euroleague

One of the most notable players for St. Mary’s in the past couple of years, Omar Samhan, has had a rough start of his pro career with plenty of challenges throughout the big man’s first year in Lithuania, where he represented the country’s champions Zalgiris.

The bubbly personality that Samhan is didn’t seem to have taken a hit mentally despite barely getting any playing time and continuously being ridiculed by some fans. The always-upbeat player just kept on smiling and living what he called a dream.

Apparently, living a dream included crashing three cars, wearing shorts in the cold Lithuanian winter and enjoying the night life of Kaunas quite often. Well, at least the last one is understandable.

Although the good-timer was truly having a good time in Kaunas, the club officials weren’t as happy. They had agreed that the player would arrive early for the new season and start working out with the team’s youngsters.

However, the promise was forgotten and the player postponed his trip to Lithuania from the beginning of July to early August and instead of trying to bounce back from a very poor season was having fun in the other side of the pond.

The decision to go solo on his decision might end up costing Samhan a roster spot in Zalgiris for next season, as the club’s management is considering sending the 22-year-old American to KK Kaunas, basically, a farm-team for Zalgiris.

The reaction from the club’s fans has been interesting, as fans of Zalgiris let Samhan know that they aren’t too pleased with how the big man behaved.

That’s a lesson for you – don’t add people you don’t know on facebook. Anyway, I love the way Samhan reacted by using his go-to move: a huge smile and just a genuine laugh. He just doesn‘t give a damn, does he?

The title tells it all – basketball experts are going to tell you what they think of the Lithuanian team chances in the upcoming Euroleague games as well as a weekly question about European hoops in general. The panel will consist of well-respected coaches (Luka Bassin and Tane Spasev), scouts (Alejandro Gonzalez and Rafael Uehara) and many different basketball writers (Arkadios Chasirides, Christophe Ney, John Hobbs, Nick Gibson, Os Davis, Sebastian Komianos,Simon Jatsch) and even a pro basketball player Milan Prodanovic. Also, for Volume 13, we’ve got a guest – our Turkish basketball expert Çağrı Turhan. I can assure you that these clever minds will all surely have something interesting to share.

To make it even more interesting, there’s a catch involved as each of the experts had only one limitation in the process – the thoughts had to fit in a tweet (140 characters).

UNTIL NEXT SEASON, EUROLEAGUE!

Alejandro Gonzalez:A Lithuanian shock in Athens was enough and Lietuvos did it vs. PAO. Olympiacos should win this one.

Nick Gibson: Mirza, on the other hand, is the girl who won’t stop showing you pictures of her cat from her camera phone. Amazing she still gets dates.

Os Davis:O, an easy one. (Not!) How about: Without Mirza, Baskonia shoots 50.2% overall & so can afford to absorb a few bricks & manage a solid 47.9%.

Rafael Uehara:Barac & Batista are too similar and crowd the paint when together. Ivanovic likes to always have 2 bigs on the floor. Sow can’t get time.

Sebastian Komianos:Mirza Teletovic is on an unofficial competition against Milos Teodosic for the most shots attempted. Now it’s hard for Caja to reach the Top8 and Final 4 so he wants to have the lead. And Ivanovic knows he will never again win another title so he wants to contribute!

Simon Jatsch:Ivanovic looks very frustrated at times with Teletovic, definitely. I don’t see many alternatives though. Bjelica? Too inconsistent.

Tane Spasev: The secret is that he’s the only “experienced” big man there. He’s at Caja for how long now, 4 years? Coach trusts him, he knows the system.

Çağrı Turhan:First, I thought he owns sextapes of Ivanovic, then realized it should be much worse, deserves to be the fun object more than Begic.

Lietuvos Rytas seem to have pulled an impossible stunt bouncing back from a horrendous start of the season to a position where a win against Caja Laboral would guarantee the Vilnius side quarterfinal berth. Back-to-back victories against Unicaja and Panathinaikos have sparked a lot of optimism in the eyes many coloring the upcoming do-or-die battle in all-too-bright colors.

Throughout the whole season Lietuvos Rytas has proven time and time again, that they shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but is the rise in form substantial this time or is it yet another time when a hyped-up team will be brought to the ground? To be fair, there should be just as much of skepticism as there are upbeat tunes.

The number of midseason moves made by Lietuvos Rytas, both in and out of the club, would be hard to match for any Euroleague team. The huge in-and-out movement to compensate the mishaps of the start of the season — remember, coach Drazen Anzulović lasted a single official game — had its toll as well, as the new crew needed time to tune their game before a slow but sure recovery which saw the defending Lithuanian champions reach the Top 16.

It has been those situations where Lietuvos Rytas couldn’t put a foot wrong where the team, led by amazing performances from Khalid El-Amin, flourished. And that is what amazes most. For a mediocre team — or at least thought to be such by many — to be a clutch performer is rare. However, it’s usually individual players and strong personalities that decide the game late on and Lietuvos Rytas has had many strong ones – namely Khalid El-Amin and Šarunas Jasikevičius.

Despite winning the last six of eight games in Euroleague, Lietuvos Rytas still haven’t convinced anyone in Europe that they are a competitive team, which can put up a challenge no matter what the opposition is. With that said, victories against Barcelona at home in Vilnius and Caja Laboral and Panathinaikos on the road been massive upsets, but yet, even despite such a spectacular run — which probably looks more impressive in paper than in reality — the Lithuanian side has had a slip here and a slip up there. Losses to Unicaja and Žalgiris in the Lithuanian Cup spring to mind as examples of rather poor performances, which have perhaps shaded how remarkable the mid-season turnaround was and how much coach Aleksandr Trifunović has got to do with the breakthrough.

Turning a lost season around was a huge achievement in itself, but true class isn’t just playing well. Consistency is the magic word. And it’s the word that you couldn’t currently link with Lietuvos Rytas. The next step for Aleskandr Trifunović is to add it to his team’s lexicon. Not an easy task, but if the side from Vilnius wants to prove their point, the best place to start is on Thursday against Caja Laboral. In fact, it’s the only place to start…

The title tells it all – basketball experts are going to tell you what they think of the Lithuanian team chances in the upcoming Euroleague games as well as a weekly question about European hoops in general. The panel will consist of well-respected coaches (Luka Bassin and Tane Spasev), scouts (Alejandro Gonzalez and Rafael Uehara) and many different basketball writers (Arkadios Chasirides, Christophe Ney, John Hobbs, Nick Gibson, Os Davis, Sebastian Komianos,Simon Jatsch) and even a pro basketball player Milan Prodanovic. I can assure you that these clever minds will all surely have something interesting to share.

To make it even more interesting, there’s a catch involved as each of the experts had only one limitation in the process – the thoughts had to fit in a tweet (140 characters).

[EDITED: HA HA!]

Alejandro Gonzalez:This should be the easiest pick of the season involving Lietuvos Rytas. Anything but a solid Greek win will surprise me. PAO.

Simon Jatsch:Damn difficult. Maybe still Messina, if you give him full authorisation over roster management.

Tane Spasev: I like a lot of coaches..every one unique in their own way.Hard to choose.Scariolo(not in EL now) Pesic, Obradovic…I choose not to answer! Who’s doing the best coaching job so far? Blatt. Knowing how Maccabi played last year and how they play now.

The title tells it all – basketball experts are going to tell you what they think of the Lithuanian team chances in the upcoming Euroleague games as well as a weekly question about European hoops in general. The panel will consist of well-respected coaches (Luka Bassin and Tane Spasev), scouts (Alejandro Gonzalez and Rafael Uehara) and many different basketball writers (Arkadios Chasirides, Christophe Ney, John Hobbs, Nick Gibson, Os Davis, Sebastian Komianos,Simon Jatsch) and even a pro basketball player Milan Prodanovic. I can assure you that these clever minds will all surely have something interesting to share.

To make it even more interesting, there’s a catch involved as each of the experts had only one limitation in the process – the thoughts had to fit in a tweet (140 characters).

THE ODDS ARE EVEN

Alejandro Gonzalez:I think Zalgiris will win this one. Probably its only win in the top16. Maybe more due to a Fener bad game than Zalgiris excellence.

The title tells it all – basketball experts are going to tell you what they think of the Lithuanian team chances in the upcoming Euroleague games as well as a weekly question about European hoops in general. The panel will consist of well-respected coaches (Luka Bassin and Tane Spasev), scouts (Alejandro Gonzalez and Rafael Uehara) and many different basketball writers (Arkadios Chasirides, Christophe Ney, John Hobbs, Nick Gibson, Os Davis, Sebastian Komianos,Simon Jatsch) and even a pro basketball player Milan Prodanovic. I can assure you that these clever minds will all surely have something interesting to share.

To make it even more interesting, there’s a catch involved as each of the experts had only one limitation in the process – the thoughts had to fit in a tweet (140 characters).

THE TURKS SMARTER THAN MAD VLAD

Alejandro Gonzalez:Istanbul is not a good place to go when your team is a mess. I don’t rule Zalgiris win out, but I’m going with Fener in this one.

I’d like to start with two things – a thank you note to the author of the post – Çağrı, as well as humming a little Happy Birthday tune to my Turkish friend, who celebrated his birthday yesterday! You can join in too!

In 2000, Turkey probably had the best league of Europe with the competition level from bottom to top, also with players such as Rivers, Griffith, Kutluay, Turkoglu, Mulaomerovic, Handlogten, Stefanov, Pashoutine, Praskevicius, Erdenay and more. Then, the economic crisis hit the whole country. Division I clubs have been heavily effected as a consequence of mainly depending on the sponsors. Next year, only Efes Pilsen and Ulker which are also giant companies of the country had big budgeted rosters, following season, number of TBL teams went down to 12. Efes and Ulker were easily dominating the league like Olympiakos-Panathinakos and Zalgiris Kaunas-Lietuvos Rytas does at the moment. In the summer of 2003, Khalid El-Amin came to the bosphorus city, shuffled the cards of the game for the next two years and further. His name was exciting considering he played in the NBA thanks to his NCAA career at UConn where he won the national championship with Rip Hamilton.

It’s not easy to describe Besiktas in a few words but its position and fan base is similar to AEK, at least both are founded in Istanbul. In an extremely football dominant country, basketball section of the club did not get much attention naturally but the rebel identity of the club provided a good starting point to destroy the dynasty of the company based clubs. In its very small gym, opponents were under a lot of pressure and it was difficult to overcome BJK for any team there. (Maccabi Tel-Aviv visited Istanbul only to play a friendly game with Besiktas to make their players get used to play under difficult atmospheres. Well, the ironic thing, Maccabi met only 50 people instead of a hot packed gym.) Khalid El-Amin who gets the main support from another legendary player of the club Larry Ayuso, was carrying a team consisting of mostly low-mediocre level talent players in 2003-04 season. Besiktas that had a budget less than 1M USD which is nowhere near Efes and Ulker, was daring these two for the title. They lost to Ulker by 1 point at both regular season games with a lot of easy mistakes at the last minutes. But, they beat Efes twice, which was a great team that was so close to reaching Final-Four, deserved to meet the Maccabi at Euroleague final in Tel-Aviv much more than Fortitudo Bologna did that season. Besiktas finished the season losing to Ulker at playoff semi finals by losing two of three games. El-Amin was simply sensational, indefensible, both as a scorer and play maker. He’s clearly not the most disciplined player on and off the court but he was making impossible things real inside those 28 meters. He was phenomenon for the fans, he was called to the stands as Pascal El-Amin (inspired by footballer Pascal Nouma who is basically the god in the eyes of Besiktas supporters). After every free throw he made, fans were cheering “Amiiiiiiiinnn” (Amen). Even his name was debated seriously for the national team due to his popularity.

Next season, Ayuso left but addition of Ratko Varda who provides a better inside-outside game and moving to new, a bit bigger gym helped the team. This time regular season, brought two Ulker wins(one of them with 26 points 4th Q performance by El-Amin) but two close Efes losses. El-Amin was showing how a great point guard he is by making everyone play better but also scoring whenever necessary once again. This time at the semi final, Besiktas started the series with a 1-0 lead. In the final seconds of the first game El-Amin made a stupid foul to Ilyasova to allow two easy points while it’s all 71. Then he made up for his mistake in an amazing way.

I am still very angry to the management of my university for placing a shitty final exam on the time of that game but I was screaming among 50 people at the computer lab just after getting a text message about what happened at the game. Then I told it to people who ask me what happened, few people joined me for singing there right after. Why I was so happy? Because, it was simply a breakthrough moment for the club, even for Turkish basketball a little bit. This time we won the series 3-1 while El-Amin was the nightmare of the Ulker. For a club who has failed several times at making the last touch, going the last inch when it comes to sportive achievements mainly in football especially, that was like breaking the wall finally. Moreover, considering the budget of the team, it was more brave heart or David vs. Goliath story than last year’s Partizan reaching Final-Four. In the final, he kept playing the same way against Efes but losing the close games and the club management’s decision of putting Varda out of the squad because of a disciplinary action on the court prevented the chmapionship. He left Besiktas at the end of the season since he was offered more then double of BJK could give him after back to back TBL MVP achievements. But, he had already brought hope and belief to the district of Besiktas. There’s a phrase about Besiktas about those failures about the last step: “There’s always a doubt wherever Besiktas’ name exists.” Well, he had beaten that beast at least for a while.

After his Ukraine days, he returned to Turkey with Turk Telekom jersey. I was sad to see him playing for another colours but I was also lucky to be in the same city. I had even missed seeing his half dozen naughty kids running on the court during the half times. He was playing good again but his team was extremely bad coached for such a talented roster. His coach didn’t benefit his play making abilities often, mostly used him as a scorer. The most logical theory I read on the internet about why his coach succeeded not to be fired for such a long time was the possibility of him having sex tapes of the board members. Apart from daggering Besiktas at 2008 playoff semis at his second season and helping capital city team reaching the finals plus winning the Turkish Cup, I witnessed one of the greatest performances ever thanks to him. On 8th January of 2008, in the middle of final exams period of the hardest semester of my B.S education which is basically consuming my life energy then, I went to see Turk Telekom-Joventut ULEB Cup game despite Ankara’s Russian type freaking cold weather. Main reason was Ricky Rubio of course, but the main actor role had been stolen by our plump butterfly from Minnesota. Rubio played fantastic but, Khalid handed Joventut-also winner of Copa del Rey- their only loss through out the tournament. He scored all his 33 points in the second half while destroying the Catalans. I will never forget how Barton and Lavina looked each other in desperation right in front of me after one his baskets, of course not to forget Rubio getting angry while El-Amin was kicking his team’s ass as he was sitting on the bench due to his foul trouble at the last quarter.

He had brought hope to Besiktas fans just like Saras does for Lithuania national team. His latest masterpiece against a Euroleague contender at one of the toughest arenas of the continent, reminded me his buzzer beater against Ulker. It was almost same point where he released the ball while I felt it was coming as he was dribbling at those seconds. What can I say, it was a very nice present for me as I was starting my birthday. Khalid El-Amin still means a lot of things on the coast of the Bosphorus at the beautiful Besiktas district of Istanbul.